We have had a wonderful first 4 days back at pre-school – the children bounded in with big smiles on Tuesday and were full of stories from home about Christmas and their gifts and happy times! Thank you again from us all for the lovely chocolates and presents and cards we received.

Our hospital role play has been a great success and we have heard some brilliant tales to trips to hospital for the children, their siblings or family – we even have the X-Ray’s from someone’s Grandad’s foot after he fell off some scaffolding – the X-Ray is fascinating because it shows the metal that he now has in his foot. Please do send in any baby scans or X-Rays that you might have! We are continuing to have that role play inside next week alongside an activity table which will focus on being healthy.

Outside we will be enjoying construction role play – lot of large scale building and planning and designing and drawing and transporting to keep the children engaged and develop their imaginative play.

Forest School has started again in our new fantastic shelter – the sun group take part on a Thursday morning and the Moons on a Friday morning, please do wrap them up warmly and we supply the waterproofs.

Circle times are going to be based on Maths and literacy in the sun and moon groups and have a theme of health and wellbeing too. We will also be learning about the change in seasons and learning lots about our garden and what we can grow and where food comes from too.

We spend time developing the children’s independence and have a few riles that we like them to follow – they get lots of praise and stickers when they complete some important tasks – please support us with this at home and encourage the following:-

Hanging their own coat on a peg when they take it off

Putting their own shoes on

Recognising their bag and shoes and coat

Help to tidy up toys

All these things help them at the end of the day when they collect their belongings and come to story time in each room.

Next week we are learning about healthy foods and will be trying new fruits and foods. We would love donations of the following items to help please :-

Raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, cornflour, shave foam, cheese, tinned pineapple and tomato puree!

The Star group have loved their week talking about their favourite TV shows and characters, dancing along to Sticky Kids and exploring treasure baskets and drawing around their hands and using fingers to count.

The Sun and Moon group have had a very varied week, talking about Christmas, drawing their presents, making thank you cards, they have played feelings games, learnt about 3D and 2 D shapes and talked about their experiences of hospitals and the doctors – some really fantastic vocabulary and chatter.

We have been learning about winter across pre-school this week, Christmas is an obvious topic and one the children love to chat about but we have also learnt about ice and snowflakes and weather and arctic animals!

We have focused on mark making in the Sun room during the free flow parts of the day and have bought some lovely new sets of pens for the children to enjoy – we do get bored of the plain old felt tips so the fancy frozen set and the highlighters and the clicky 4 colour biro’s have been well recevied!

The sun table has been an ice world all week – I am sorry for any food colouring stained fingers, mine are bright blue! It has been really fun exploring all the ice we have made, rescuing Dinosaurs from the ice filled balloons, making frozen paint, and painting ice cubes and they melt in our hands!

Outside we have built a sleigh and will be wrapping presents next week to fill the sleigh so we would love donations of any ribbons and bow sets and any old Christmas cards and labels for presents please!

The Christmas post office is in operation outside for writing letters to Father Christmas and we are beginning to have some cards dropped into the post box in reception too!

Here are two of the songs that we are learning for the Nativity for you to practise at home! We have actions too so hopefully the children can teach you those!

(Farmers in his den)

My hat goes on my head

My hat goes on my head

Warm clothes for when it snows

My hat goes on my head

My scarf goes around my neck

My scarf goes around my neck

Warm clothes for when it snows

My scarf goes around my neck

My gloves go on my hands

My gloves go on my hands

Warm clothes for when it snows

My gloves go on my hands

My boots go on my feet

My boots go on my feet

Warm clothes for when it snows

My boots go on my feet

(I’m a little teapot)

I’m a little snow man, look at me

Here’s my buttons 1-2-3

These are my eyes and this is my nose

I wear a hat and scarf but brrr its cold

I’m a little snowman, look at me

Built in the garden for all to see                     

Our circle times are based around our theme of winter to link all our learning so the Sun and Moons have learnt that snowflakes are unique and we used our scissor skills to make our own which are now decorating the preschool windows. This group have also written some letters from their names to make a snowman picture, made Christmas stockings and enjoyed snowball counting games!

The stars have helped to paint some scenery for the play on the 14th December and decorated the tree in their room and have been working on their listening and attention skills and loved popping large bubble wrap! They have also used our new tunnels from crawling through while acting our the Bear Hunt story!

Buddy the Elf has also arrived at preschool and sits in the curiosity cube and we really found the photos that you posted on facebook funny! The children loved spotting their own Elf so please add more if you can.

We hope the next two weeks will be COVID free for us all and full of Christmas sparkle and fun!

At the time of writing the blog we are awaiting a lot of PCR test results for children who attend our pre-school, I hope that everyone is feeling well and not too poorly and we are very grateful to all of our families for your understanding at this difficult time. We have 4 positive cases within the pre-school at present and we all wish anyone feeling unwell a quick recovery. It is a very difficult decision to close a class which we do not undertake lightly but I am very sorry for the Stars who missed their session on Wednesday and we will offer you an alternative session over the coming weeks to compensate. We hope to be operating as usual for as long as possible but please do test your children – it is becoming increasingly clear that even with no symptoms the lateral flow tests are missing cases. If you or your child has any symptom at all – even a cold like illness please book a PCR test.

On to the more fun part of the blog – we have had a wonderful week despite the worry about families who have been affected by COVID. Forest School sessions have been a delight – the children exploring the garden in the November sunshine and building long water gutter systems and creating art on clear plastic using paint in spray bottles – excellent for building up strength in little hands and fingers!

Inside we have been creating space items and enjoying space activities to support our role play outside, this theme has been great and really captures the children’s interest! This has also been carried into the circle times for the Sun and Moon group who have made rockets using the letters in their name and then they have been extended by their group leader to copy the letters and write their name with some fantastic results. The Sun and Moons have been learning about Remembrance Day as well and we have made two poppy wreaths to lay on the Memorial in our town on Sunday. They really listened to the simple story that we taught them about people keeping us safe and how we give thanks for them. Part of our curriculum is to follow the calendar over the year and bring events to life for the children – helping them learn new vocabulary, new concepts and learn about our diverse world – please let us know if you have any special celebrations coming up? A wedding, Christening or a thanksgiving celebration with American relatives perhaps?

Outside we have been transported into Space, re-created a bonfire from our experiences over the weekend and chatted about all the fireworks that we saw. We are limiting the bikes over the next couple of weeks as the children play well together and make up some brilliant games when the bikes are not always available.

The Star group have been practising their ball skills, learning how to match animal patterns and used shapes to make rockets for the space theme. They have made so much progress and really enjoy their time with us!

Next week we progress along our theme to learning about our own planet – we will be exploring habitats and environments, recycling and the nature we can see around us. We would love donations of big cardboard boxes and newspaper please.